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Baton Rouge's levees 'minimally acceptable' on one side, unranked on the other

baton rouge bridge 3.jpg

The west side of the levees around the Mississippi River in the Baton Rouge area has been designated "minimally acceptable" by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The other side hasn't been ranked.
(Photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune archive)

Hundreds of levees across the country have been designated
as unsafe, but Baton Rouge's aren't among them.

An Associated Press article Thursday said that 326 levees
across the country have been deemed "unacceptable" by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers and urgently need repairs. Only about 58 percent of the federally-overseen levees in
the U.S. have been inspected and rated thus far.

The Corps classifies the Baton Rouge area's levees as two
separate segments: One is the "Mississippi River West Bank" below Morganza, covering
a 153-mile stretch that includes Ascension Parish, Assumption Parish, Iberia
Parish, Iberville Parish, Pointe Coupee Parish and West Baton Rouge Parish.

That section has been designated "minimally acceptable" by
the Corps, which sounds worrisome but is the designation most of the country's
levees are receiving. According to the AP, 1,004 of the 1,451 levees that have
been ranked so far are "minimally acceptable," with some sort of deficiencies
that need correcting.

Only 121 are rated "acceptable."

The other side of Baton Rouge's levees, the 107-mile "Mississippi
River East Bank," has not been ranked yet, according to the Corps' database.
That segment includes Ascension Parish, East Baton Rouge Parish, Iberville
Parish, Livingston Parish, Saint Charles Parish, Saint James Parish and Saint
John the Baptist Parish.